**not an expert disclaimer**
Went through almost exactly what you describe, albeit with a newer site, back in August following some grest feedback / advice from people here at PAW.
Basically the only thing that stayed was the content, re-did the URL structures (from root right through to articles), the design and everything else.
Experience was that the SERPS hit was big but temporary - took about 10 days for the new URLs to come into the rankings and maybe another couple of weeks before the old ones stopped appearing... has been onwards and upwards ever since - a risk in some ways but with hindsight worth it 100%.
We tried re-directs but never got them working properly. With these in addition you should do even better!
Cheers, Mark
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